Route reliability record
CLT→ECP
Charlotte to Panama City
- Flights
- 1,147
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 437 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,147 CLT to ECP flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLT to ECP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.5%, against 81.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,129 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
80.4% on time across 984 flights
These figures cover 1,147 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to ECP
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 50 | 92.0% | 67 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 113 | 86.6% | 102 min | 0.88% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 984 | 80.4% | 74 min | 1.32% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte to Panama City
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → ECPCharlotte to Panama City | PSA Airlines | 79.3% | 80.4% | 1.32% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. CLT → VPSCharlotte to Valparaiso | American Airlines | 75.4% | 76.2% | 1.04% | 11am–2pm, Sat | AA 2909 15:08 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am5 flights—
- 8am–11am362 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm155 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm206 flights82.4%
- 5pm–8pm133 flights61.8%
- 8pm–5am286 flights80.5%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.8% on time, against 88.0% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 70.1% on time, 26 points below October, the best at 95.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 141 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.5%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,904 reported delay minutes.
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.
Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 437 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.8% on time across 1,146 flights, 4 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,147 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ECP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 95.6% on time and June 70.1%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,129 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to ECP questions
How often is CLT to ECP delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.5% of the 1,147 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLT to ECP compared with the rest of the country?
81.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLT to ECP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.8%, 26 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on CLT to ECP?
June is the weakest month at 70.1% on time, compared with 95.6% in October. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ECP to CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on CLT to ECP86.6%
- PSA Airlines on CLT to ECP80.4%
- CLT to MCO, a related route70.6%
- ATL to ECP, a related route84.0%
- CLT to ATL, a related route83.3%
- American Airlines on-time record92.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record80.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. CLT to ECP and ECP to CLT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.